While today’s children are serious about Sugar Plum fairies and Santa Claus, the thoughts of ten yr old Mary Wade must have been vastly different. At Christmastime in 1789, Mary was the youngest convict aboard a ship bound for Australia: considered one of 200 and fifty or so ladies, half method to a wierd land. Their feminine convict ship The Lady Juliana, a part of the Second Fleet, had set sail from Portsmouth in July.

Months earlier Mary, (born in England in 1778), had been arrested and located guilty of stealing another child’s garments. Her demise sentence, commuted to transportation for life, was bitter sweet. Mary had escaped the gallows however would never see her household again. She spent the spring of 1789 in horrendous circumstances at Newgate Prison. Mary was considered one of fifty women fed bread and water in a cell that had neither beds nor toilets. However, once aboard The Lady Juliana, her scenario improved. All convicts have been fairly fed and given warm beds. Only 5 girls and two kids died through the eleven month voyage and the situation of those that arrived in the colony in 1790, had improved.

To relieve the strain on Sydney Cove, Governor Phillip sent many new arrivals including Mary, to a place described by Captain Cook as, ‘a Paradise’ – Norfolk Island. There, at age fourteen, Mary gave birth to a daughter. She had two more youngsters with emancipated Irish transportee, Teague Harrigan and by 1806, the family was dwelling in a tent on the banks of the Tank stream in Sydney. Mary Wade: The Littlest Convict joined a whaling ship but by no means returned.

By 1809, Mary had married and set up residence near the Hawkesbury River with convict Jonathan Brooker. Emancipated circa 1812, the pair took possession of a thirty acre farm in Airds, Campbelltown and lived happily until Harrigan’s dying in 1833. Twenty six years later in 1859, eighty yr outdated Mary died at house. She had given delivery to twenty one youngsters. In her lifetime, her family had grown to include 5 generations and over three hundred descendants. Now, Mary’s descendants quantity within the tens of 1000’s, including Kevin Rudd, former Prime Minister of Australia.

At Christmastime in 1789, ten yr previous convict Mary Wade was facing an uncertain future. Today, she is acknowledged as one of Australia’s founding mothers.